After Kinship

Carsten, Janet

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511800382

Cited by 435 publications

(396 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…While this is not to deny the 'self' in its many various guises, and nor indeed to suggest that in some places it's only ever about the 'other'-we agree with that growing number of scholars who argue that the distinction has been overdrawn in both directions (e.g. Carsten 2004;Sahlins 2011a, b;Spiro 1993;Staples 2003)-it is to argue that one of the most important lessons that the anthropology of suicidal behaviour has to offer is that the act occurs within a nexus of bodies and relationships, in which 'self' and 'other' provides some form for meaning but always collapse back into each other, while also being designated and defined by acts of suicidal behaviour.…”

Section: Situating Suicide Ethnographicallysupporting

confidence: 72%

Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem: Ethnographic Approaches to Understanding Self-Harm and Self-Inflicted Death

Staples

Widger

2012

Cult Med Psychiatry

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More than a century after Durkheim's sociological classic placed the subject of suicide as a concern at the heart of social science, ethnographic, crosscultural analyses of what lie behind people's attempts to take their own lives remain few in number. But by highlighting how the ethnographic method privileges a certain view of suicidal behaviour, we can go beyond the limited sociological and psychological approaches that define the field of 'suicidology' in terms of social and psychological 'pathology' to engage with suicide from our informants' own points of view-and in so doing cast the problem in a new light and new terms. In particular, suicide can be understood as a kind of sociality, as a special kind of social relationship, through which people create meaning in their own lives. In this introductory essay we offer an overview of the papers that make up this special issue and map out the theoretical opportunities and challenges they present. A Problem of Enduring Human InterestSuicide is a problem of enduring human interest, forcing us to ask questions about ourselves and our world that other human behaviours do not. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 1 every year almost one million people across the globe die from suicide, equating to one such death every 40 s. Over the past half J. Staples

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Section: Situating Suicide Ethnographicallysupporting

confidence: 72%

Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem: Ethnographic Approaches to Understanding Self-Harm and Self-Inflicted Death

Staples

Widger

2012

Cult Med Psychiatry

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“…It has long been recognised that economic modernisation is associated with changes in family and household structures and the ways that personal identity is construed (see, for example, Engels 2004Engels [1884 ;Stone 1990;Carsten 2004). In accordance with this, contemporary studies across the world identify apparently similar tendencies towards more nucleated household structures; growing stress on individual agency and personal choice in narratives of how marriages occur; and greater emphasis on and expectations of the conjugal relationship.…”

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confidence: 96%

Patriarchal Investments: Marriage, Dowry and the Political Economy of Development in Bangladesh

White

2016

Journal of Contemporary Asia

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“…An attention to materiality simultaneously destabilizes and recontextualizes an anthropological focus on biogenetic 'substance' (Carsten 2004) and reframes materiality as being subject to the vicissitudes of caring or neglectful interpersonal relationships, time, death, and violence. Kinship ties are, in many ways, semiotically mediated through daily engagement with material bodies and non-human objects and entities.…”

Section: In Conclusion: Holding Together Mutuality and Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: (De)materializing Kinship—Holding Together Mutuality and Difference

Goldfarb¹,

Schuster²

2016

Social Analysis

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Abstract:Although kinship studies have traditionally focused on 'solidarity' and 'mutuality', dis-alignment, exclusion, and difference are equally crucial foci for analysis. In this introduction, we explore articulations of mutuality and difference through the lens of materiality, particularly the matter of politics and value and the semiotics of material life. We suggest that non-mutuality and exclusion are especially apparent in contexts where kinship intersects with the consolidation of economic and human capital. We then draw attention to the ways in which material signs are productive forces of relatedness in day-to-day interactions between humans, non-humans, and other material things. By examining the gaps and fissures within kinship through the lens of material practice, the contributors to this special section uncover new opportunities for critical engagement with theories of difference, semiotics, and value.Keywords: difference, exclusion, kinship, materiality, mutuality, relatedness, semiotics, value We begin our inquiries into kinship with a question and a provocation. While kinship relationships are often explored through a focus on 'mutuality', what do we gain empirically, theoretically, and politically by exploring the non-mutuality that we argue is also inherent within kinship? We contribute to the vibrant conversation in anthropology that has refocused attention on the shared substances of relatedness, 1 which has productively focused analysis on everyday practices, embodiment, and material objects. Our question also emerges out of our commitment to understanding the figurations of race, gender, class, and nation that place difference at the heart of relational belonging. Our interest in this matter is both conceptual and political. By thematizing dis-alignment, exclusion, 2 | Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Caroline E. Schuster and non-mutuality in kinship, we seek an alternative grounds for comparative study in anthropology that does not presume mutuality and that incorporates otherness as a necessary focus in order to understand relational belonging. We endeavor to comprehend the deeply intimate ways that exclusion and difference are propagated.This guest-edited special section emphasizes materiality as a starting point for anthropological analyses of relatedness. First, we suggest that attention to materiality is an important angle from which to examine the ways in which the field of 'new kinship studies' has approached relatedness in the years following David Schneider's (1984) A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Schneider famously argued that anthropologists were merely imposing a Eurocentric priority on biogenetic blood ties on their analyses of all kinship relationships. In response, anthropologists have turned to explorations of non-biologically rooted relatedness, focusing on how kinship emerges over time through caregiving relationships

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After Kinship

Cited by 435 publications

References 95 publications

Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem: Ethnographic Approaches to Understanding Self-Harm and Self-Inflicted Death

Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem: Ethnographic Approaches to Understanding Self-Harm and Self-Inflicted Death

Patriarchal Investments: Marriage, Dowry and the Political Economy of Development in Bangladesh

Introduction: (De)materializing Kinship—Holding Together Mutuality and Difference

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